What We Learned in Red Bull’s Domination in the F1 Azerbaijan GP

Red Bull’s domination of the 2023 season continued Sunday as Baku specialist Sergio Perez claimed victory in Azerbaijan to move to within six points of Max Verstappen in the championship.

Perez perfect in Azerbaijan

Around the roads of Baku’s capital Red Bull Racing was once more streets ahead. Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez swiftly dispatched pole man Charles Leclerc during the early laps and cruised away. The timing of the safety car period – caused by Nyck de Vries’ stricken AlphaTauri – skewered Verstappen, who had already stopped, enabling yet-to-pit Perez to limit his pit lane loss time and emerge in front. From there, Perez managed the pace for the remainder of proceedings, keeping a slight gap over Verstappen, to make it 2-2 in the win stakes between the Red Bull drivers in 2023.

Perez became the first multiple winner in Baku, on the occasion of the circuit’s seventh grand prix, while Red Bull’s advantage was displayed once again by Perez’s 21-second gap to third-placed Charles Leclerc. Verstappen still leads the standings, and remains the firm favorite for the title, but Perez’s composed win cut the points gap to just six.

“It means a lot, it’s been a weekend where the pressure has been on, where we had to deliver, and we’ve done a tremendous job,” said Perez. “I’m really happy, an excellent result for the championship.”

Verstappen lamented being “a little bit unlucky” with the safety car timing but also conceded he wasn’t fully in tune with Red Bull’s RB19.

“I was close [to Perez] but when you stay a few laps like that the tires get a bit too warm, and then after that I slowly dropped back a bit and was not entirely happy with how I had the balance of the car,” he said. “I was trying a lot of things to try and find a better compromise to feel more comfortable. I took a few laps to figure out, but the last 10 laps were quite good again and I felt more comfortable, so the weekend was overall a good lesson.”

Leclerc returns Ferrari to the podium

A podium finish is not much to shout about in the overall history of Ferrari but Charles Leclerc finally delivered the first piece of 2023 silverware to Maranello at the fourth time of asking. After a miserable start to the year, with his Bahrain engine failure influencing his Saudi Arabian result, before a first-lap incident in Australia, Leclerc put a haul of points on the board with third place. Neither Leclerc nor Ferrari are in title contention this season but the result – combined with his spectacular one-lap pace – at least provides encouragement that Ferrari is heading in the right direction, even with Red Bull in another zip code. Indeed, Ferrari’s own press release headline was ‘a morale-boosting podium.’

“We are still not quite there in terms of race pace and we know that’s what we have to work on the most at the moment,” said Leclerc. “We maximised every session throughout the weekend and couldn't have done anything differently, so that’s something to be happy about and the team did a great job. The bottom line is that we have to focus on race pace and tyre management and push to make even more progress in the coming races.”